The Time Travelers Wife 2009

      This film is based on a novel written by Audrey Niffenegger.  When Henry DeTamble meets Clare Abshire in a Chicago library they both understand that he is a time traveler.  She knows much more about him as he has not yet been to the times and places where they have already met.  He falls in love with her and she has already been in love with him.  His continuing unavoidable absences while time traveling and then returning with increasing knowledge of their future makes things more difficult for Clare.

     This is a tearjerker movie, although romantic it may prove too gloomy for tweens and younger teens.  The central couple shares a powerful love but their relationship is constantly tested and sometimes to the breaking point.  There are a few moments of levity.  Expect some nudity but primarily in a non-sexual context.  There is some swearing and a few bloody but though not gory scenes. There’s also discussion of heavy topics like free will, miscarriage, death and loss of a parent.

     For a film about the metaphysical it is curiously lacking in energy?  It starts out far too explanatory like a wannabe friend who overshares.  While it’s true that the audience needs prodding given the material is about how to make time travel approachable?  It seems questionable to keep inserting explanations that have been heard before.  As an example, why does Henry keeps stealing clothes wherever he turns up?  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)

107 min, Drama directed by Robert Schwentke and written by Bruce Joel Rubi with Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston, Michelle Nolden, Alex Ferris, Arliss Howard, Katherine Trowell, Bart Bedford, Esther Jun , Matt Birman, Craig Snoyer, Carly Street, Romyen Tangsubutra, Brooklynn Prouix.

Note:  Imdb 7.1* out of 10* with 143,285 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes 38% with 159 critic reviews 59% with 250,000+ audience scores, Common Sense Media S. Jhoanna Robledo, 2* out of 5*, age 15+, 2* drinking, drugs & smoking, 3* positive messages, positive role models, violence, sex, language, 

Special Note:  After filming was completed, Eric Bana started filming Star Trek (2009).  This film required him to shave his head?  Reshoots for this movie were needed, so production was put on hold until Bana's hair could grow out.  It took so long that the movie's release date was pushed back by nearly a year!!  This is one of four movies in which Rachel McAdams stars as the love interest of a time traveler.  The other films are About Time (2013), Midnight in Paris (2011) and  Doctor Strange (2016).  But in these films her character travel does not travel through time, just her co-star time travels.  

Mistakes:  When Clare has her first kiss she has a long, thin and brown hair clip in her hair, near the end of the scene the hair clip becomes yellow.  In the first meadow scene, young Clare pulls off her right shoe and throws it at the bushes. She believes her brother Mark is hiding in the bushes.  When she runs to take the blanket to Henry, we see that it is her left shoe that is missing off her foot?  When Henry sits with his mother on the train, she is reading "The Chicago Tribune" yet when she turns the page the banner on the inside of her paper reads "The Washington Post”?